1862-1938
Laura Bayley was more than just an actress in the early silent era, she was a filmmaker in her own right, and deserves the recognition of a woman film pioneer. Born Laura Eugenia Bayley in Ramsgate (located in east Kent, England), she and her three sisters Florence, Blanche and Eva (the eldest of them) became a popular burlesque act at the Brighton seaside aquarium, performing by 1887 with J. D. Hunter's Theater Co. that produced the summer burlesques there. She appeared in on-again/off-again productions with her sisters through at least the mid-1890's. She had already married George Albert Smith in 1888, who was a known entertainer of "lower stage acts" like staged seances, magician's tricks and hypnosis acts...you know the kind that still exist, when a volunteer from the audience is requested? Smith is today acknowledged as one of the United Kingdom's earliest film innovators--but he was by no means alone in this endeavor. Bayley was every bit his partner. It was also a family affair as her sister Florence was married to Smith's theatrical partner. To be clear, the background that they both come from is similar to that of the earliest days of other comedic tricksters like Méliès, and as such they were very deeply involved in the theatrics of entertainment, more than the purely technical side of film-making or photographic sciences. The Smith's were operators of a pleasure garden in Brighton for summer tourists/bathers. In this capacity they got involved with projected animations, magic lantern showings, even exhibitions of Edison's phonograph. It is not surprising, then, that they eventually got into the film making business themselves. They were lease holders on the St. Ann's Well and Wild Gardens venue in Brighton (the above mentioned pleasure garden) and in 1897 they began to shoot and exhibit their own films there, in addition to the other forms of technological entertainments they provided. Smith, for his part, started out filming actualities just like a number of other early filmmakers did. It was most likely Bayley that came up with idea for short narrative and trick films for better entertainment value. She was reportedly a brilliant comic actor on stage and her performances in the films that survive are fun to the max. It is hard to calculate how many films that she (and even other members of her family) appeared, because, while we are VERY lucky to have any of them survive, very many of these little films are no longer with us. The earliest surviving film in which she appears is The X-Ray Fiend aka The X-Rays (one of my favorites!!), a "trick film" dating from 1897 clearly, and heavily influenced, by Méliès, it uses a clever jump cut, along with what can only be called the earliest version of a "motion capture suit"--it is also cited as probably the earliest example of a "horror comedy" film. Bayley is one of two actors in the film, appearing with popular Victorian stage comic Tom Green.
The Internet Movie Database is especially deficient in giving credit to her, even as a actress, never mind as a director. For example, the latest film for which her acting credits in the database list Mary Jane's Mishap in 1903, though there are production still of her in several films after this year. Film historians have identified her in far more than the measeley ten acting credits she gets in that particular online Db. The best illustration of this is a still from Smith's Two Clowns shot sometime around 1907 in his patented Kinemacolor (I do not even believe the film is even listed in at IMDb). In fact, the British Film Institute (BFI) lists her as the most prolific actress in British films at the turn of the century. She is also not the only member of the family in these films; a number of others, including both of her sisters and her children have been identified in Smith films from the time, though only her older sister Eva, who was some ten years her senior, gets any kind of credit at present.
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| Two Clowns (c1907) |
It is also important to stress that Bayley also made her own films in addition to the films of her husband that she performed; the most well known of them as of this writing is Hey, Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle dating from 1902, but the film is certainly not her only effort. It is credibly supposed that at least a number of the literally hundreds of films attributed to her husband, where actually her work. She is identified as belonging to the Brighton School of filmmakers--of which her husband is the most famous "member," but at least one film historian identifies her as the first her as the world's very first female cinematographer. She is certainly very high in the running, with Alice Guy being the only other contender. That is historically very important. As if this was not enough, she also is known to have "helped" in camera constructions (more likely she was deeply familiar with the inner workings of these machines--probable that she was involved in some of their inventions). She was deeply involved with the marketing of films made for a kind of home/portable projector Biokam (invented by Brighton "fellows" Alfred Darling and Alfred Wrench). If anything, she was more proficient with this particular technology than was her husband.
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| A Biokam in the collection of the Science Museum Group-visit them here. |
These kinds of film makers, the Smith's, Méliès, or even an Alice Guy, were so important in the early days of the technology, not only for the many technical innovations that they came up with for entertainment purposes. They are also intrgral to the earliest development of narrative film at in it's infancy. As filmmakers, they developed a number of editing techniques purely for the love of making an audience laugh and yell in amazement...it turns out that many of these same techniques were extremely important to later filmmakers in telling stories, conveying a location, or providing a cheaper way to film a difficult scene. They were most certainly indispensable in the making of the first feature length films. Evidence of their immediate impact on the films of their time was a little film called (English translation) The Merry Skeleton directed by Louis Lumière; it's highly unlikely the Lumière's would have ever concieved of such a film without the work of Smith, Méliès....and Bayley (you can see Le squelette joyeux here). As for Laura Bayley Smith, she passed away at home in Hove on the 25th of October in 1938 at the age of 76. There is not information on her burial.
Women's Film Pioneer Project (Columbia University)
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